Not even remotely true. The Nest wires the same as any other thermostat. Prior to the Nest there were plenty of inexpensive to high end devices with simple instructions included .
For what it is worth, I think the Nest has been generally worse than a dumber programmable thermostat, especially after Google took it over. The App only allows a single phone to be connected now which is a problem when both me and my wife want access. There is also no way to run the fans without switching it on heat or cool. The fans can also only run for a maximum of 12 hours before it needs manual intervention to restart. All of which are a problem if you have say a pellet stove providing heat in one part of the house and want to circulate the air to the rest of the house using the furnace fan. On my old thermostat I could even switch the fan to low speed mode when the heat pump wasn't running, which is something the Nest seems to have no concept of. There is an API, but it's all Googlefied and requires a subscription and kind of assumes you're already a full stack Google developer.
What I installed instead (myself) was an Ecobee 3+. I've been very happy with it. I have it set to run the fans 10 minutes of every hour to move air around a little bit. With a previous dumb thermostat, using the fan more often caused a noticeable spike in the electric bill. We live in a 1914 house with multiple levels and minimal air returns so there tends to be variations in temperature (top hot in summer, cool in winter; basement coldest in summer even with vents closed but exposed pipes are full of cold air, etc.) that aren't easily fixable.
Ecobee has started selling security cameras, which I haven't looked into. I really do like the idea of having a best-of-breed thermostat and I hope that Amazon doesn't buy them. I'm a little surprised that they haven't.
Amazon had their own thermostat so they don’t need it. Their own thermostat locks people into Alexa, ecobee doesn’t.
Polar opposite of our experience. We have two Nest thermostats in our home and both my wife and I can connect to and manage each one with our respective phones.
> There is also no way to run the fans without switching it on heat or cool.
Also not our experience. We can run the fans independently of heat/cool. That could be a consequence of your HVAC system opposed to the Nest itself.
My ecobee has connectivity issues over HomeKit and the API requires the cloud (which is annoying for something like home assistant). I’m also convinced it’s intentionally dumb in its scheduling. I always felt I needed to manually update the settings and could never trust it to just maintain temperature.
It does let you manually control the fans and stuff, which is a feature I really liked when I had air filtration built into the HVAC. I would miss it on a Nest I guess. Edit: it seems others are contradicting this claim.
That said, the API doesn’t require a subscription, just a one-time $5 fee (which is likely less than server and ops costs to run the API). And the API seems like a pretty standard rest api based on the docs. Similarly, the ecobee api seems roughly as complicated. The only difference is auth with a Google account or ecobee API key.
They seem to have been hit pretty hard by supply chain problems too (most online prices 2x or more than what they were).
I don't think the Nest has any options for local control though, so HomeKit on the Ecobee seems like a win, but I got distracted before I figured out how to do what I want with HomeAssistant.
The Nest does better fan scheduling IMHO, although neither one does anything smart with sequencing multiple units, which is really frustrating.
But we generally don't use the Nest app much any more, except to use its horrible scheduling interface (horrible because Google's UI for changing the schedule is way too finicky and non-standard).
Everyone in the house uses HomeBridge which has a fantastic Nest plugin. The plugin uses the API you mention. Much faster than opening the Nest app. Less than 1 second to update the temperature and hear the furnace kick on via the iPhone's control center.
The last time I used the Google Home app I couldn't set my fan to continuous but the Nest app still allowed it. Seems wild to me that they don't have this basic stuff nailed down.
It seems to work fine for both me and my wife.
> These leaf springs allowed for the self-configuration of the unit, saving the time and troubleshooting that would have prevented a regular person from tackling installation. And it worked! It was so simple that grandparents were making YouTube videos of themselves installing it.
Did Nest sponsor this article? It's a Google property and they managed to reference another Google property.
YouTube is ubiquitous. It’s not like they referenced someone’s blogger account or something.
I remember my very cold mother calling me because there was a message about a wifi problem and she didn't know she could somehow bypass it and turn up the thermostat.
The Nest gets around the common requirement by cheating - it charges a rechargeable battery by leeching current into the signal wires. If the endpoint is a coil on a relay or solenoid, this usually causes no problem, it often causes no problem if the relay is solid state, but on some equipment that return current will switch on the equipment when it tries to charge its own battery. In other cases it won’t charge at all. Usually it’s quite clear if this happening as the equipment will be cycling even with no call for heat.
(I thought it was a shortage of return but once I eliminated that I cut open the furnace and found the problem)